---
title: 'Contract Student Worker - Machine Learning Engineer - Data Mining & VLM (Full-time) at Zoox'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/contract-student-worker-machine-learning-engineer-data-mining-vlm-full-time-m1k6zmtxsdrs'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-08'
---

# Contract Student Worker - Machine Learning Engineer - Data Mining & VLM (Full-time) at Zoox

- **Company:** Zoox
- **Location:** Foster City, CA
- **Employment:** contract
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-08-07
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/zoox/7206fd97-14e4-43a0-b903-ba65dfeee53e

## Job description

## About Zoox

Zoox is an autonomous ridehailing company building the world's first purpose-built robotaxi — fully electric, bidirectional, with no steering wheel or driver's seat. Backed by Amazon and founded to make transportation safer, cleaner, and more accessible, Zoox designs its vehicles entirely around the rider. We're currently operating in Las Vegas and San Francisco, with Austin and Miami on the horizon, and testing underway across seven U.S. markets.

## About Our Part-Time Student Worker Program

Zoox's part-time student worker program puts you at the center of one of the most ambitious challenges in transportation. You'll contribute to real projects, work alongside engineers and researchers pushing the boundaries of autonomous technology, and gain experience that goes well beyond the classroom. We're looking for students who bring strong academic foundations, curiosity that doesn't stop at coursework, and a drive to be part of something that matters.

## Role Overview

Support Zoox's Rules of the Road (RotR) program, where a miner + LLM/VLM tooling method automatically mines and triages potential road-rule violation events from simulation and fleet data. The student will be helping create or improve the data miners that generate the candidate events, help develop and evaluate the VLM triagers — curating golden datasets, measuring precision/recall against expert triage, and extending automation to new regulations and data sources.

## Responsibilities

- Develop and iterate data miners locating potential RotR Violations following SSO requirements
- Develop and iterate on VLM/LLM workflows and pipelines for classifying RotR events
- Curate golden datasets and evaluate triager precision/recall against human triage

Required Qualifications

- Extend triagers from simulation to fleet/service data
- Strong Python / Pyspark / SQL skills
- Coursework in machine learning, computer vision, or NLP. Understanding of supervised learning, model evaluation, and common sources of dataset bias and label noise.
- Analyze error cases and translate findings into pipeline improvements
- Hands-on experience building production LLM/VLM applications, including agentic workflows, RAG, tool calling, evaluation, and/or fine-tuning.
- Familiarity with software-engineering practices such as Git, unit testing, debugging, and code reviews.

Bonus Qualifications

- Strong Scala skills.
- Experience with Spark optimization and distributed data-processing systems.
- Experience with autonomous vehicles, robotics, mapping, or transportation-related datasets.

Program Requirements

- Experience evaluating multimodal or vision-language models.
- Currently enrolled in a B.S. or M.S. program in a relevant discipline.
- Experience with prompt optimization, model fine-tuning, or human-in-the-loop ML systems.
- Available to commit to a minimum three-month assignment.
- Able to commit a minimum of 40 hours per week.
- Able to work on-site at one of our office locations.
- Must adhere with Zoox confidentiality requirements, including refraining from using or sharing proprietary company information outside of Zoox, such as in academic research, theses, publications, or presentations.

We want to be transparent: this is not an internship. The Part-Time Student Worker Program is designed to complement your academic experience by providing meaningful, ongoing work alongside your studies. Rather than participating in a cohort-based program, you'll join a team directly and contribute to real projects with real impact. While the program does not include structured intern programming or a pathway to full-time employment, it offers valuable opportunities to learn, develop new skills, and gain hands-on experience in a professional environment.

Compensation for this role is $30/hour.

This is a contract position; employment will be through a vendor contracted with Zoox. The hourly rate is as posted, and benefits eligibility is determined by the vendor.

## About Zoox

Zoox is developing the first ground-up, fully autonomous vehicle fleet and the supporting ecosystem required to bring this technology to market. Sitting at the intersection of robotics, machine learning, and design, Zoox aims to provide the next generation of mobility-as-a-service in urban environments. We’re looking for top talent that shares our passion and wants to be part of a fast-moving and highly execution-oriented team.

Follow us on LinkedIn

Accommodations If you need an accommodation to participate in the application or interview process please reach out to accommodations@zoox.com or your assigned recruiter.

A Final Note: You do not need to match every listed expectation to apply for this position. Here at Zoox, we know that diverse perspectives foster the innovation we need to be successful, and we are committed to building a team that encompasses a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and skills.

## About Zoox

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Zoox is building a fully autonomous, all-electric, purpose-built robotaxi service to give the world a better way to ride.
- **Entity Type**: Private (independent subsidiary of Amazon, acquired in 2020)
- **Headquarters**: Foster City, California, USA (with offices in Las Vegas, San Francisco, Austin, Miami, Atlanta, Los Angeles)
- **Founded**: 2014
- **Founders**: Not specified in provided sources

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Autonomous ride‑hailing / Self‑driving electric vehicles
- **Target customers**: B2C – individual riders seeking safe, convenient, and sustainable urban transportation
- **Mission**: “Give the world a better way to ride” – providing safer, cleaner, autonomous ride‑hailing for everyone [zoox.com](https://zoox.com/about)

## Products & Services
- **Zoox Robotaxi**: A purpose‑built, fully autonomous electric vehicle designed from the ground up for ride‑hailing. Features bidirectional driving, four‑wheel steering, and no steering wheel or pedals. The service handles all charging, maintenance, and fleet management – riders simply get in and enjoy the ride [zoox.com](https://zoox.com).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed (Zoox is a private subsidiary of Amazon)
- **Key Metric**: Not publicly available (revenue and funding details are not reported as a stand‑alone entity)
- **Notable Investors / Partners**: Amazon (parent company)
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Received authorization from the Nevada DMV to operate robotaxis on public roads [zoox.com/about](https://zoox.com/about)
  - Expanded testing and operations to Las Vegas, Seattle, San Francisco, and other cities
  - Continues to scale its engineering and operations teams (multiple open roles on the careers page as of 2026)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Purpose‑built design**: Unlike retrofitted vehicles, Zoox’s robotaxi is designed from scratch for autonomous ride‑hailing (symmetrical, bidirectional, four‑wheel steering, no driver controls)
- **Amazon backing**: Deep financial resources, supply chain expertise, and cloud infrastructure (AWS) support rapid development and scaling
- **Full‑stack autonomy**: In‑house AI, computer vision, and sensing stack integrated directly into the vehicle design
- **Safety‑first approach**: Comprehensive testing, safety‑critical system design, and focus on public road validation

## Strategic Focus
- Achieving commercial launch of the Zoox ride‑hailing service in select U.S. cities
- Continuing to mature the autonomous driving system through real‑world testing and simulation
- Expanding the “Go‑to‑Market” strategy and building out operations teams (see CRM Lead, Go‑to‑Market Manager roles) [jobs.lever.co/zoox](https://jobs.lever.co/zoox)
- Scaling manufacturing and prototyping to prepare for fleet deployment

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Diverse, supportive community with inclusion‑focused strategy. Crew‑led groups for personal and professional development. Emphasis on trust, humility, and openness [zoox.com/careers](https://zoox.com/careers)
- **Work environment**: Hybrid? The careers page lists many roles as “On‑site” in Foster City, CA, with other office locations available. In‑office perks include a famous food program with daily changing local and sustainable dishes, plus a busy calendar of events and sports teams.
- **Benefits**: Comprehensive health plans (Cigna), mental health support, wellbeing program, flexible time off, generous family planning and caregiver support, and a commitment to work‑life balance.
- **Growth opportunities**: Work on cutting‑edge autonomous vehicle technology alongside some of the brightest minds in AI, engineering, computer vision, and more. Offers internships and re‑entry programs (via Path Forward) for career returners.
- **Recruitment process**: Uses AI tools to assist in reviewing applications but final decisions are human. No fees are charged at any stage – watch for recruitment scams [zoox.com/journal/landing-a-job-zoox](https://zoox.com/journal/landing-a-job-zoox)

## Sources
1. [Zoox official website](https://zoox.com)
2. [Zoox About page](https://zoox.com/about)
3. [Zoox Careers page](https://zoox.com/careers)
4. [Zoox job openings on Lever](https://jobs.lever.co/zoox)
5. [Zoox hiring and interview process](https://zoox.com/journal/landing-a-job-zoox)

## Other roles at Zoox

- [Sensing and Perception System Safety Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/sensing-and-perception-system-safety-engineer-zoox-foster-city-9b41z224ntq6) — Foster City, CA
- [Lead Data Platform Engineer - Enterprise, Data & AI](https://feeny.ai/job/lead-data-platform-engineer-enterprise-data-ai-zoox-foster-city-61c1tdms6spr) — Foster City, CA
- [Software Engineer - Collision Avoidance System Metrics](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-collision-avoidance-system-metrics-zoox-foster-city-9xfh2gw0nayv) — Foster City, CA
- [Contract Student Worker - Autonomy Safety Data Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/contract-student-worker-autonomy-safety-data-engineer-zoox-foster-city-vb29ss0k5hgs) — Foster City, CA
- [Software Engineer, Operational Tools](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-operational-tools-zoox-foster-city-mmfc9jxj9vgs) — Foster City, CA
- [Diagnostics Serviceability Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/diagnostics-serviceability-engineer-zoox-foster-city-zpp032643x45) — Foster City, CA
- [Manager, Fleet Operations Training](https://feeny.ai/job/manager-fleet-operations-training-zoox-foster-city-8vfyx98j41fz) — Foster City, CA
- [Embedded Software Engineer - Drive Systems](https://feeny.ai/job/embedded-software-engineer-drive-systems-zoox-foster-city-whvhzqychegb) — Foster City, CA
- [Senior Staff / Principal Software Engineer - Freeway Autonomy](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-staff-principal-software-engineer-freeway-autonomy-zoox-foster-city-y93sb485dj53) — Foster City, CA
- [Senior Supplier Quality Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-supplier-quality-engineer-zoox-foster-city-d9gmdemvwa6b) — Foster City, CA